Get Shorty

I just finished the book Get Shorty by Elmore Leanord, and can't wait to see the movie. This was a great book about a loan shark from Brooklyn who moves to Miami, then L.A. and becomes involved in the movie business. I read the New York Times book review for this book, called "The Shylock is the Good Guy" by Nora Ephron. Although the review was not written very well, I do agree with the point it made that this was a great book. The review jumps from event to event in the book very fast in the beginning, but evens out when it gets to the main part of the book. When Chili Palmer, the main character, becomes a representative for a famous movie producer, the heat is on. The review gives information about the characters, but does not go all of the way through. For instance, its description of one of the characters is "a female lead who used to scream at slime people in Harry Zimm's movies...". Personally, I do not thank that it was written very well and does not seem like a professional author. Fortunately for her, she was still writing a review on a great book.

A Hope In The Unseen

I just finished the book "A Hope In The Unseen" by Richard Suskind, and I think that it was a great book. This book was the story of a boy who attending an extremely dangerous high school in Washington D.C. At Ballou Senior High School, Cedric Jennings (the main character of the book) is at the top of all of his classes. He is one of only a handful of people in his entire class planning on attending college. Although he is made fun of and accused of "wanting to be white", he persists through it all and is accepted in to Brown University. At Brown, he has trouble assimilating in to the culture of a university that is mostly white. He sticks to himself due to his trouble adapting, but slowly opens up. He meets another Black student named Chiniqua, and they start dating. He attends parties with her at the all black dorm, and begins to make more friends. Although he hits rocky points with his stereotypically white room mate Rob, they eventually are able to become friends. Cedric is able to adapt to the culture much better then he had originally thought.

Let America Be America Again

I took a break from the book that I was reading to read Let America Be America Again by Langston Hughes. This was a quick read, but I wanted to read it since we are starting our poetry unit in class this quarter. It was a good book, a collection of poems that told the stories of the plight of black Americans and minorities. Hughes discussed the problems of wars, poverty, and more. He uses very vivid language, and you can clearly picture everything that he says is going on. This book included a number of poems varying in length and in style. It is clear to see that Hughes likes to vary his writing, but usually keeps it on the very broad topic of his longing for peace and equality for all men. I usually don't get in to poetry very much, but I can tell that during this poetry unit I am going to be reading a lot of Langston Hughes.

The Sixth Target

The Sixth Target by James Patterson was a quick and easy read, but also a good one. It follows three cases worked by a homicide detective in San Francisco, Detective Sergeant Boxer. The first is the case of a mentally disturbed man who randomly murders five people on a ferry. Then, there was a rash of kidnapping/murders. Finally, there were multiple homicides in a single apartment building. I liked the fact that there were multiple cases going on at once, as oppose to just a single ongoing case. It was more interesting and more realistic to see numerous cases at once. There was even a hostage situation at the end of the book (when the kidnappers were being apprehended) that was more realistic then most television shows-the second the women holding the hostage popped her head out long enough, she was stopped by a sniper bullet. That's the cold, hard truth.

Fortunate Son, The End

I have only been reading this book for a little over a week, but I already finished it. It was an amazing book, even though it was very sad. The young boy, Thomas, goes off to live with his father in a bad neighborhood. He stops going to school, and spends all of his time in an abandoned alley behind his house. Here, he discovers many things such as small animals, birds, and a dead body. In the meantime, his "brother" Eric is leading an upper-class life in a nice neighborhood, however neither one of them has forgotten the other. Thomas becomes a homeless man living on the streets, and Eric lives in a dorm at UCLA. Eventually, they become reunited and suddenly. They end up across the country, and Thomas is in the hospital numerous times due to gunshot wounds and car crashes. In the end, in a crazy twist of circumstances, their problems are solved when a friend calls in political favors. They make it back to L.A., and you'll have to read the book to find out the entire story.

Fortunate Son, Pt. I

I just started Fortunate Son by Walter Mosley, and so far this book is good but very sad. It is about a young African-American boy named Tommy born with a hole in his heart. His mother befriends a white doctor, who convinces her to take him out of the plastic case he is trapped in. The boy survives, and his mother begins dating the doctor. They move in together, and become a family (along with the doctor's son). All is well until the boy's mother, Branwyn, dies. Tommy is sent to live with his abusive father, who claims he loves him but seems to want nothing to do with him. Tommy, however, doesn't seem affected by all of this. He goes about his life trying to find the goodness in all things, even though things are pretty bleak. So far, I am only on page 113, but I can tell that this is a very deep book and I can't wait to read more!

In Cold Blood, The End

The ending of this book was somewhat happy, somewhat sad. The two men responsible for the Clutter murders were finally captured, arrested after a confession, and sentenced to death. A few years later, they were executed by hanging in a Kansas State Penitentiary. Although these two men brutally murdered an innocent family of four for only fifty dollars (all that was gained in the robbery), one still must feel somewhat bad for them, or at least one of them. Perry Smith had an extremely violent and troubled childhood. His parents were separated, and he lived with his mother in San Francisco. His mother drank too much, and he was soon in the care of an orphanage where he was beaten and brutalized. These memories were never forgotten, which no doubt led him on a path to violence. However, this is not an excuse for murder, which the jury in this case realized. Smith showed remorse before his hanging, while his partner joked around. The agents on the case viewed this hanging, and related that it did not make them feel any better. Maybe they will never have consolation for this brutal crime.

In Cold Blood, Pt. II

I am on page 210 of this book, and so far a lot has happened. Two men, Perry Smith and Dick Hickcock, have murdered this innocent Kansas family, the Clutters. Due to the fact that this murder occured in such a quiet town, agents were brought in from county as well as state agencies. For quite a while, things looked bleak for the investigators. The followed empty lead after empty lead, not seeming to move anywhere in the case. They could not even determine the motive of the crime! Was it a robbery? A revenge killing? The detectives are puzzled until they recieve a call fom a prison warden who had information. One of the prisoners knew Smith and Hickock, and remembered a plan that he heard them discussing. The detectives followed up on the lead, and things seemed to check out. However, Perry and Smith seemed to be missing in action-that is, until bad checks popped up in their name right in Kansas city! This is all I know at this point, but I think that I'm about to find out more!

In Cold Blood, Pt.I

I have only read the beginning of this book so far, but I am already pulled in. So far, the book has been introducing characters that come up later on in the story, and introducing the general plot. A very traditional family in a small, Kansas town are brutally murdered by a pair of robbers out on parole and looking for a good "score". They're constant reassuring of each other that there will be "no witnesses" is very eerie foreshadowing for the rest of the book. Truman Capote, the author, is a brilliant writer who is very detailed and is a famous writer. He is able to paint a vivid picture of the setting in rural Kansas, and makes the characters in the story seem like people that you have known for your entire life. Unfortunately, that won't be such a good thing once you get to the point where they are murdered (haha).

Into The Wild, The End

As we found out in the beginning of the book, McCandless did not survive. Of course, it was still a shock to see how he actually dies, starved to death in an abandoned bus in the middle of the frozen Alaska wilderness. It's kind of sad that he still wrote only happy entries in his journal, right up until he starved to death. After articles about him were published, their authors received a lot of hate mail. People called him stupid and criticized him for knowing nothing when he went in to the wilderness. However, these people were shot down when this book was published. McCandless knew how to hunt, knew what he was doing, and knew how to survive. He only died because of an injury and lack of a map. He was aware of how important a map was, but chose to ignore it and live on his own. He wanted to live in the wild away from people, and his wishes should be respected even today.

Into The Wild, Pt. II

Coming nearer to the end of the book, I'm starting to like the main character Alex. He just wants to be nearer to the wilderness, and wants to be more in touch with the environment. So far, he has come in contact with many people along the road who have similar views. He meets drifters driving along the highway, and hitchikes with many people who all have stories to recount about him when later interviewed. One man even went so far as to say that he asked Alex if he could adopt him. It was clear that Alex made connections with everyone that he came across. He stayed in touch with two drifters that he hitchiked with to get to Alaska. He also kept a semi-permanent residence in Ohio, where he held a job working on a lumber company. He was constantly entertaining the people of the town with his stories.

Into The Wild

The story of a man who went into the wild of Alaska to live off of the land, Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer is a book that makes the reader wonder. At first, my thoughts were "How could anyone be so crazy as to wander off in to the frozen Alaska tundra with no money, food, or worldly possessions. My first thoughts were that this man was not mentally well. However, as I read on, I began to learn a little bit more about who Chris McCandless (the main character) really is. He is really just someone who wants to be in touch with the world, one to one. He grew up in a very privileged home, and wanted to get away from the whole upper class scenery. One day, he just abandoned his home, left his college, and set out on the road for years just looking for a place to go. As the story goes on, the reader begins to feel for McCandless, and I began to understand where he was coming from. Granted, I'm not going to give up everything I own and go in to the wild, but I can see his point and why he did it. I hope to find out more as the story goes on.

Tex

This is a novel by S.E. Hinton, the same person who wrote The Outsiders. I am only on page sixteen but so far, I am not really enjoying the book. There is a very strong focus on living in the country and riding horses. The main character, Tex, has a horse named Negrito which he rides almost every day after school. He is very attached to the horse, and treats him like a human. He talks and has conversations with his horse, and discusses with the reader how his horse stomps his feet and tries to say how annoyed he is when he is not fed on time. I can tell that there is definently a very deep connection between the boy and his horse. Unfortunately, there is not really anything interesting going on in the story, and the book is slow.

Nineteen Minutes

Over the summer of 2009, one of the books that I read was Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Piccoult. This was a very deep book, and really made me wake up and be exposed to some of the things going on in high schools around the country. The main character in this story was physically and verbally abused so badly that he was driven to bring a gun to school and open fire on students for nineteen minutes. This book shows fictional examples of atrocities that actually do occur. The main character, Peter, is the but of all the jokes from the school jocks. Even in kindergarten he is bullied by the fifth graders. This book made me think about what goes on at Ardsley High School. Although we do not have as big of a bullying problem as the high school in this book did, we still have bullies. It could happen at any high school where someone is abused so badly that they just snap. It makes you think, even when you're just messing around with your friends.

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